Russian Personalities

People well-known in art, sport, film, fashion

Sergey Kovalev is a Russian professional boxer. He is Russia amateur champion (2005), world military champion (2005), world light heavyweight champion, WBO and WBC champion. He is a Boxer of the year according to The Ring, WBO, Sports Illustrated, USA Today (2014). Sergey is a Master of sports of international class. His nickname is Crusher.
Kovalev is the leader of the ranking of the best light heavyweight boxers according to The Ring Magazine (2015-2016). From November 2, 2015 to November 20, 2016 he held the 2nd place in Pound for Pound in The Ring rating. According to BoxRec site he is considered to be the best Russian boxer-professional at the moment.
Kovalev is a founder of Krusher Promotion.
Sergey Alexandrovich Kovalev was born on April 2, 1983 in Kopeisk, Chelyabinsk region, USSR. When Sergey was three years old the family moved to Chelyabinsk. His parents divorced when he was a baby. Sergey was brought up by his stepfather. At school the boy was engaged in hockey.
At the age of eleven he began boxing in Chelyabinsk. Sergey Novikov became his first coach.More »

Vladimir Zworykin was a Russian-American engineer who was born and educated in Russia, and later emigrated to the USA. He is one of the inventors of modern television.
Vladimir Kozmich Zworykin was born on July 17, 1888 in Murom, Vladimir Province, Russian Empire. He was born into the family of a merchant of the first guild Kozma Zworykin, who sold bread, owned steamships and was a chairman of the Murom public bank.
Zworykin received a degree in electrical engineering from the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology in 1912 and a doctorate in physics in 1926 from the University of Pittsburgh.
At the Institute of Technology he participated in the first experiments in the field of “Farsight” and electronics, led by Professor Boris L. Rosing.More »

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Russian writer, thinker, philosopher and publicist, corresponding Member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences since 1877. Dostoevsky acted as an innovator in the traditions of Russian realism. After the death Dostoevsky was recognized as a classic of Russian literature and one of the best novelists of world significance. He is considered to be the first representative of personalism in Russia. His novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed and The Brothers Karamazov were included in the list of the 100 best books of all time in 2002.
Fyodor Dostoevsky was born on October 30, 1821 in Moscow, Russian Empire. Dostoevsky’s father dreamed, and even insisted that his two eldest sons entered the Engineering College and received a profession of engineers. But Fyodor and Mikhail didn’t want. They were fascinated by literature. Finally, they both became writers.
At the age of 36 Dostoevsky married for the first time. At that time Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva was the widow of his friend. In 1864, Maria died of tuberculosis, but Fyodor continued to take care of her son from her first marriage.More »

Larisa Latynina (nee – Diriy) is a Soviet gymnast, nine-time Olympic champion (1956, 1960, 1964), Honored Master of Sports of the USSR (1956), repeated World and European champion (1957- 62), the USSR champion (1956-64) in the individual and team competitions, honored coach of the USSR (1972), honored worker of physical culture of the Russian Federation.
Until 2012 record of US swimmer Michael Phelps – 22 medals, Larisa had the largest collection of Olympic medals in the history of the sport – 9 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze medals. Latynina is also known for the fact that at the European Championship in 1957 she won all the gold medals.
Larisa Semenovna was born on December 27, 1934 in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union. Her father, Diriy Semyon Andreyevich (1906-1943), was killed in the Battle of Stalingrad. Her mother, Barabanyuk Pelagia Anisimovna (1902-1975), was a cleaning woman. Since her childhood Larisa dreamed of the ballet. She joined choreographic studio at House of Folk Art. When the studio was closed Larisa became involved in gymnastics. In 1950 she became a member of the national team of Ukraine at the Championship in Kazan.More »

Sergey Nemtsanov is a Soviet athlete, diver, and the master of sports of international class. In 1979 he became a champion of the USSR in diving. In 1974 and 1975 he was a winner of the USSR Youth Championship.
Sergey Vasilievich was born on January 23, 1959 in Leonidovo, Sakhalin Region. He was born into a military family. His father served as a pilot in Hungary. His mother left her son to his grandmother.
Sergey lived and trained in Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR in the Dynamo sports society.
He was a participant of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal and 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow.
Sergey Nemtsanov fell in love with an American woman, tried to flee to Canada, but was trapped and returned home despised by everyone. Love broke the Soviet diver.
40 years ago during the Olympics there was a huge international scandal in Montreal.More »

Valentin Rasputin was a Russian writer (representative of the so-called village prose), publicist and public figure. He was a Hero of Socialist Labor (1987), winner of two State Prizes of the USSR (1977, 1987), the State Prize of Russia (2012) and the Prize of the Government of the Russian Federation (2010), member of the Writers’ Union since 1967.
Valentin was born on March 15, 1937 in the village of Ust-Uda, East-Siberian region. After school, he entered the historical-philological faculty of the Irkutsk State University. As a student, he became a freelance correspondent of youth newspaper. One of his essays attracted the attention of the editor and later it was published in the anthology Angara (1961).
He lived and worked in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Moscow.More »

Vasily Demut-Malinovsky (1779-1846) was a Russian sculptor, the greatest representative of the Russian Empire. His works echoed the heroic epoch of the 1812 War and were close to the thoughts and feelings of the Russian people. His monumental works form the ensemble unity with such classic dominants of Petersburg as the Kazan Cathedral, the Arch of the General Staff, the Narva Gate. He worked in the funeral sculpture.
The future sculptor was born in St. Petersburg in 1779. His father worked as a wood carver. In 1785, while still a child, the age of six Vasily began to study at the Academy of Arts. During his studies he won four medals: two silver and two gold.
In 1803, Demut-Malinovsky, together with other pupils of the Academy of Arts was sent to Italy. Three years later in 1806 he returned home, but all of his works done abroad perished en route. So, he had to create new works.More »

Alexander Benois was a Russian artist, art historian, art critic, founder and chief ideologue of the World of Art. As a talented artist, a populariser of art and organizer of many exhibitions, as a museum worker and an active figure in the world of theatre and cinema, Benois made an enormous contribution to the history of twentieth-century Russian art.
Alexander was born on April 21 (May 3), 1870 in St. Petersburg into a family of Russian architect Nikolai Leontyevich Benois and Camilla Albertovna Benois (the daughter of the architect A. K. Cavos).
For a while Alexander studied at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1894 he graduated from St. Petersburg State University. In the same year he began his career as a theorist and art historian, wrote a chapter about the Russian artists for the German book “History of the painting of the XIX century”. In 1896-1898 and 1905-1907 he worked in France.More »

Mark Antokolsky was a famous Russian sculptor, realist, professor of sculpture.
Mark was born on October 21 (November 2), 1843 in Vilnius, the Russian Empire. He was the youngest, the seventh child in a Jewish family. His parents were rather poor people and very religious. As a child Antokolsky drew wherever he could – on the table, on the walls. When the child grew up, he was sent to learn wood carving. A. A. Nazimova, a wife of the governor-general and known patron of the arts, learned about the talented boy. Thanks to her Mark entered the Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1864 Antokolsky was awarded a silver medal for the high relief Jewish Tailor, and in 1868 – the gold for the high relief Jewish Miser.More »

Abram Arkhipov was a Russian painter, Peredvizhnik. He made his name in the history of Russian art as a sensitive, poetic artist who devoted all his talent to themes from peasant life.
He was born on August 15 (27), 1862 into a poor peasant family in Ryazan Gubernia.
He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In addition, from 1884 to 1886 he studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Arkhipov started out as a genre- artist, in the footsteps of his teacher – Perov.
In 1887, Arkhipov got a large silver medal and the title of the class artist for the painting Visiting the Sick Woman, which depicts the artist’s mother.More »